Irish Biography

Radio Caroline was an iconic pirate radio station, immediately capturing the imagination of millions of people when it started broadcasting rabble-rousing, cutting-edge music to Britain and Ireland from international waters...

Johnston Brown was hailed by Martin Dillon as "the superb investigator who was central to bringing 'Mad Dog' Adair to justice." According to Dillon," ...the day [Brown] publishes the story...

Aesthete, dandy, poet, dramatist and philosopher Oscar Wilde's wit and charm dazzled society in London, America and Paris in the late 1880s. But the year 1895 brought Wilde literary triumph...

Bernard O'Shea is a lucky man. He owes his life to his long-suffering wife, Lorna. She has nicknamed him 'The Feckin' Eejit' because of the ongoing crises he puts her...

During his drinking days Paul Campbell let down and hurt many people - his family and loved ones in particular. Alcoholism is known as the 'family illness' and it truly...

'Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian KeyesAS BROADCAST ON BBC RADIO 4From the award-winning author of...

'Prose written with the pen of a poet' - Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape'Full of wisdom and poetry and epic emotion, This is My Sea explores grief, memory...

Welcome to the house of fun.It's the early 1980s and Fiona Neary and her family have recently moved back from England to the family farm. Fiona's huge-hearted mum decides to...

Aged thirteen, Martha is rescued by the courts from the clutches of her evil stepfather, Jackser, and her feckless mother, Sally. After numerous arrests for shoplifting, a judge rules that...

Then I heard the most beautiful music, an suddenly I was outa me body an flyin. An I wanted te cry inside meself. I wasn't dead any more, I was...

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively...

'A book which will very soon be acknowledged as a classic of Irish sportswriting' Ciaran MurphyWhat is it like to be female in a male-dominated sporting world? If you play...

On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, the destitute children swarm and the rich turn a blind eye. To these needy children "Mama Tina" has become an irrepressible, unorthodox...

In his highly addictive style, Gene Kerrigan effortlessly reconstructs the Ireland of the 1950s and early 1960s in which he grew up. An adult world of absolute moral certainties, casual...

A fascinating portrait of a neglected poet and memoirist whose colourful and complicated life brought her into contact with some of the major literary figures of early twentieth-century Ireland. Sheila...

'Donal Walsh was able to see the beauty in life. He spent his valuable time helping us to open our eyes' Cecelia Ahern, authorSixteen-year-old Donal Walsh came to national attention...

A classic memoir from Ireland's favourite storyteller. Here Taylor follows To School Through The Fields with these equally captivating recollections of family life in pastorial County Cork. Infused with wit...

It became obvious that this woman was not going to break for these men. Even when they showed her pictures of her child, with his head swollen the size of...

An Affair with My Mother by Caitriona Palmer: a moving and gripping story of love, denial and a daughter's quest for the truth.Caitriona Palmer had a happy childhood in Dublin,...

Michael Murphy's second volume of reflections deals with the fact that 'life goes on' and details the progression of those we met in the first book, including himself. His writing...

'Our dog, Jack, was anti-clerical ...but my father clung to the theory that the dog simply detested the colour black...' Hugh Leonard's delightful autobiographical evocation of his Dublin childhood in...

In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who...

One of the modern classics of Irish publishing, Nuala O'Faolain's evocative memoir remains fresh and vivid even for today's reader. This repackaged edition focuses exclusively on the autobiographical material of...

In 2002, an eighty-five-year-old former civil servant was voted 'Irishman of the Century'. Widely regarded as "the architect of modern Ireland", T.K. Whitaker's life spans the history of the Irish...

This is the story of a man whose lifelong concern has been to create space in his life for learning. Andy O'Mahony was among the first faces on Irish television...

As a young girl Alice Carey came to realise that `home' can mean different things. The only child of Irish immigrants to New York in search of a better life,...

Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class of Co. Down, Archibald Hamilton Rowan (1751-1832) led a colourful life. Heavily influenced by the celebrated radical John Jebb at Cambridge, and the revolutionary...

Irish broadcaster and producer Andrea Hayes is well known to the Irish public for her positive, friendly and down-to-earth persona on television and radio. Hidden behind her smile though, is...

A remarkable and powerfully uplifting memoir of living with cancer by the Number One bestselling author In 2005 Emma Hannigan was thirty two years old, happily married to her long-time...

In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (mnd). He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal...

The overwhelming response of readers to Lorna Byrne - regardless of religious beliefs - is that she gives them back hope, helping them to realise that no matter how alone...

Before he was thirty, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Thomas Weaver was an accomplished engineer and geologist who was successfully managing Avoca's main copper mine and had brought...

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019'[A] painfully intense, courageous and gripping account of [Fanning's] journey to the underworld of madness and back. This is a brave and instructive book.'...